I enter Central Mexico and my riding distances have slowed down a lot compared to the outset. I spend a few days in Aguascalientes relaxing in the gardens and spending time at the hostel run by Felipe, a crazy Spaniard and his Mexican wife which doubles as a bar/cafe full of students and young drinkers. I have a huge dorm room to myself and hang out with the guys running the kitchen, the tradesman fixing up the place and drink many calimochos, the local way of mixing wine and coke & micheladas, adding tomato juice to beer with spices. On the Sunday I leave for Guanjuato where I booked some spanish classes at a school for a week.
The city sits beautifully within a valley and amongst the surrounding hills. It's colourful and alive with great squares, gardens and many tunnels running through the mountains.
The recent century has included mass migration to the U.S. by those searching for work, economic growth, nationalization of oil companies, a widening gap of the rich and poor, large foreign debt, earthquakes, a banking crisis and now the drugs war and according to most Mexicans I speak to, increasing corruption. Everything seems to have happened or is happening here, its history seems to say a lot about the livelihood, the volatility and the contradictions I see here every day.
The city sits beautifully within a valley and amongst the surrounding hills. It's colourful and alive with great squares, gardens and many tunnels running through the mountains.
I decided on three hours of classes every morning, a private vocab. class with Esme, a group class with expat John on the preterite and a conversational hour with Silvia. It was fun and worth it to build up my vocab. and gave me direction with verb tenses and use. I make friends with Silvia who invites me over for dinner one evening for sopes, a kind of open, flat taco with more ingredients and listen to her friends play guitars through the night. The Guanajuato central market was great for lunch and the alleyways were great to wander during the day and get lost in. The city pays homage to Cervantes who spent a lot of time here including a iconographic museum and many statues and murals in public spaces of Don Quixote, arguably the best fictional book ever written.
The town is also known for its history of preserving the dead. The renown museum showcases mummies that were preserved in the soils beneath the mountains, often when relatives couldn’t pay the tax for a cemetery burial during a 19th century cholera outbreak.
I stayed at Buzz and Maria's place, they were very hospitable and had a beautiful house in the hills above the city which was relaxing to chill in the evenings. I was able to cook a few times for the first time in months and shared a great meal of chillies rillenos, traditional to the region with Buzz, Maria and a few of there friends on my final night. There´s a road which winds around the top of the valley near the house called La Panoramica, I cruise around it every night at dusk taking in a different view of the valley and city below.
In 1810, Guanajuato was the first city captured during the War of Independence from Spanish reign, a timely place to discover an intriguing history on Mexico which involves advanced ancient civilisations, many conflicts, invasions and revolts – perhaps what keeps the people politically active and as some say, still skeptical of foreigners.
For 3000 years Indian civilisations ruled and thrived in Mexico – from the Olmecs who first cultivated corn, beans, chillies and cotton, the Teotihucan’s, then the Mayans who excelled at pottery, writing, calendar making (remember the world was coming to an end last year) and mathematics. The Toltecs followed with the most powerful armies the Americas had seen then the Aztecs who founded a settlement at modern day Mexico City and became highly developed politically, artistically, religiously and commercially and finely worked ceramics, gold, silver, copper, jade and turquoise.
The Spanish first arrived in 1517, confronted by fierce natives, returning a couple of years later searching for a route to Asia and its riches of spices and other resources. They founded Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico and were then welcomed on marching to the heart of the Aztec empire because their light skin resembled the Aztec God Quetzalcoatl. Four years from their first arrival, the Spanish found Mexico City and built a city on the ruins of the Aztec capital which became the centre of the European New World.
For nearly 300 years, the Spanish reigned, instilling Catholicism and Western culture on the Native Indians. As Napoleon occupies Spain and installs his brother as Head of State, momentum grows for a Mexican War of Independence as the colonial government weakens. In 1810, Hildalgo, a priest from Dolores calls for independence, setting off revolutionary action by both natives and the mixed Indian & Spanish race. Guanajuato is first captured and Independence is granted officially in 1821 with divided rights for Spanish or mixed Spanish and the natives.
Texas shortly after declares independence and the U.S. takes the opportunity to invade during an unstable period, capturing California and New Mexico, Mexico finally concede to losing nearly half their territory. The remainder of the 19th century involves a torn society with guerilla warfare, unpopular reforms, new constitutions, leaders forced into exile, civil war and suspension of foreign debt payments which leads to Napoleon III installing the Archduke of Austria on the throne of the Mexican Empire for four years. After the French withdrawal, supposedly from U.S. pressure, social tensions and inequality leads to the revolution of 1910, 100 years on from the Independence movement.
The recent century has included mass migration to the U.S. by those searching for work, economic growth, nationalization of oil companies, a widening gap of the rich and poor, large foreign debt, earthquakes, a banking crisis and now the drugs war and according to most Mexicans I speak to, increasing corruption. Everything seems to have happened or is happening here, its history seems to say a lot about the livelihood, the volatility and the contradictions I see here every day.
